| Derlavaian War | |||||
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| Belligerents | |||||
 Forthweg |  Algarve |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||
| Penda of Forthweg Donalitu of Jelgava | Mezentio of Algarve † |
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The Derlavaian War was fought for six years by the main powers on the continent of Derlavai.
The war began with the death of Alardo, Duke of Bari. With the kingdom without an heir, the kingdom of Algarve moved in to annex it, violating the Treaty of Tortush established at the end of the Six Years' War. The kingdoms of Valmiera, Jelgava, Forthweg, Lagoas, and Sibiu declared war in response to Algarve's actions.
Each of Algarve's neighbors invaded its territory: Forthweg drove into northwestern Algarve toward the city of Gozzo, Valmiera invaded Algarvian territory in the southeast, and Jelgava in the northeast (though Jelgava was hampered by the Bratanu Mountains). All these attacks on Algarve suffered due to the military forces of the kingdoms concerned being stuck in the mindset of the Six Years' War. It is also shown that incompetence among noble officers in the Jelgavan and Valmieran armies results in their gaining ground much more slowly than they might have otherwise done. Forthweg, meanwhile, lacked significant numbers of behemoths and dragons.
Forthwegian forces pushed toward Gozzo but were quickly driven back by large concentrations of behemoths supported by numerous dragons, using a new tactic of swooping down to treetop height before dropping eggs (dive-bombing) making their dragons much more accurate. Forthweg's army was routed and forced to fall back deep into Forthwegian territory, as Algarve moved to capture Eoforwic, the Forthwegian capital. Then Unkerlant, seeing an opportunity to regain land it had lost in the previous war, invaded Forthweg from the west. With the best part of its army already defeated, caught between two much larger forces, Forthweg collapsed and its king, Penda, was forced to flee southward to Yanina.
After the defeat of Forthweg, Valmiera and Jelgava continued to move slowly into Algarvian territory. Algarve, meanwhile, trained its forces in the Duchy of Bari for an amphibious operation that turns out to be an attack on Sibiu, using a fleet of sailing ships undetectable to Sibian mages because they don't use the ley lines. Caught by surprise, Sibiu quickly collapses and falls under Algarvian occupation. However, this victory brings Lagoas into the war against Algarve, which worsens Algarve's strategic situation as Lagoas is much more powerful than Sibiu was.
At this point, one year into the war, Valmiera and Jelgava continue attacking, but the Jelgavan noble officers are too incompetent while the Valmierans mount an unsuccessful frontal attack on Algarve's border fortifications. Algarve then launches an attack on Valmiera, with forces striking in the Marquisate of Rivaroli and driving the Valmierian forces back in disarray. This attack however is only a feint for the real drive which comes in the north of the kingdom. This area is rugged and forested, but Algarve is able to move large units of behemoths through the narrow roads and into the rear of the Valmieran army. This force reaches the Strait of Valmiera and cuts off the Valmierian and Lagoan forces defending Valmiera from the Algarvian forces further south. The Algarvians capture Priekule, the capital of Valmiera, along with the Valmieran king Gainibu, who becomes a prisoner in his own palace.
Jelgava, fearing an Algarvian attack, begins to dig in and uses sorcerous concealment to improve its fortifications. Algarve however avoids a direct frontal assault on Jelgavan positions in the Bratanu Mountains and instead flies several regiments of troops into the mountain passes by dragon, bypassing the main Jelgavan forces. After cutting off their supplies the Algarvians quickly destroy the encircled Jelgavan forces and move to occupy the rest of the kingdom. Jelgava's king, Donalitu, flees into exile in Lagoas.
After the defeat of Jelgava, the kingdom of Yanina allied with Algarve, and drove the Lagoans from the Land of the Ice People, while Unkerlant fought a harsh war against Zuwayza in order to take revenge on the Zuwazin for declaring independence after the Six Years' War.
Algarve and Lagoas battled on the sea and in the air above the Strait of Valmiera and the Narrow Sea.
Algarve did not attempt an invasion of Lagoas, instead invading Unkerlant. The Algarvian-Unkerlanter conflict would witness dramatic Algarvian victories in the first phase that would bring the Algarvians to the gates of the Unkerlanter capital, Cottbus, but winter and logistics would lead to the thwarting of the Algarvian victory, followed by major Unkerlanter drives. It was during this phase that the Algarvians first began to turn to the use of "Special Magecraft": mass slaughter of Kaunians to secure a desperate weapon of "mass destruction to boost their own power.
In the wake of this, the Algarvians were to initiate a second campaign to destroy Unkerlant, this one meeting a harsh fate in the gruesome battle for the city of Sulingen on the Wolter, beginning with a dramatic Algarvian victory, and ending with the complete destruction of an army marooned in a bloody battle in the city and some of the most costly and savage battles within the overall war. This campaign wrecked the best portions of Algarve's remaining army, and was subsequent with the destruction of the army in the Land of the Ice People following an attempt to export the massacres of Kaunians done against the will of the locals and the Gods these locals served.
The next year, Algarve tried once more to destroy Unkerlant, only to be caught up in the colossal Battle of the Durrwangen Bulge, which destroyed Algarve's ability to use behemoths to the same degree as Unkerlant and was one of the largest and the most destructive conflicts of the entire Western Front. Durrwangen was not a triumph of skill but instead a brutal slamming match between two giants where one giant broke but the other kept on striking. After the war in the Land of the Ice People, the Eastern Front settled for a time into a pattern of ever larger raids of dragons on Derlavai's East, and on the frantic work done by the Nantaali Project. Also in the West, Kuusamo and Gyongyos fought bitter battles over islands that were marked by costly offensives over limited territory.
The next year, the Unkerlanters would begin a set of colossal offensives that took the Algarvians ever further down the abyss, and took the Unkerlanters themselves into Algarve, with Gyongyos beginning to use the bloody magic pioneered by Algarve, the controversial Eoforwic Uprising, and the Unkerlanters securing the switches of Zuwayza and Yanina to their side in the titanic Western Front. As Algarve's situation declined, the Unkerlanter Army was soon to amass an advantage so powerful that even the death of skillful Behemoth riders like General Vatran could not redress the losses these armies suffered. Soon, too, the Eastern Front heated up with the invasion of Jelgava, and with this the slow unraveling of Algarve's control of Valmiera.
In the last year of the war, the bloody Battle of Trapani ended with the suicide of Algarve's King Mezentio and the unleashing of the demonic Powers Below in last-ditch and ultimately failed gambits to postpone Algarve's defeat, in the meeting of the Unkerlanters and the Kuusamans and Lagoans in the eastern portion of Algarve, the division of the continent, and the use of the new and deadly magic developed by the Nantaali Project that annihilated Gyongyos. With the annihilation from the skies of Gyorvar, Gyongyos's capital, the Derlavaian War came to an end and a continent was suspended between the Empires of Kuusamo in the East and Unkerlant in the West.
See also[]
- World War II, on which the Derlavaian War appears to be based.
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